By Jonathan Michael Feldman, April 14, 2022
The Russian Reaction to Finland’s and Sweden’s Move to NATO
Weeks into Russia’s barbaric attack on Ukraine, some wonder what the proper policy solution is. Is the solution for countries like Sweden and Finland to deepen military aliances or is the solution to pair them back? Should one be a “useful idiot” for Russia or a “useful idiot” for NATO and the USA? Could there be advantages to being neither and thereby sidestep the pathway of useful idiocy altogether? And can one be a “useful idiot” with respect to a state that exports weapons to impoverished countries or countries engaged in horrific wars? Can one even ask the last question in these times?
In a brief article entitled, “Ryssland varnar Sverige och Finland för att gå med i Nato,” (Russia warns Sweden and Finland about going into NATO), Georgina Harris in Dagens Nyheter (published online April 14, 2022) cites the Russian security expert Martin Kragh. In Harris’s article Dr. Kragh makes several observations which raise quite a few questions that are not really answered. Dr. Kragh has had a very significant impact on Swedes’ views of Russia. Therefore, democratic discourse is partially mediated by the views he expresses and represents in the mass media. Thus, a closer look is warranted.
The article describes how “barely a day after Finland presented its security policy analysis of a possible NATO membership, threatening noises [were] heard from the neighboring country to the east.” Harris writes that Russia threatened “to drop all talks on the Baltics as a nuclear-weapon-free area – should Sweden and Finland apply for NATO membership in the defense alliance.” One question is why “a possible NATO membership” is not threatening, while the Russian threat to drop talks is itself considered threatening. One potential answer is that NATO is considered a “defensive” alliance, but not an “offensive one.” This potential answer simply cannot be true. Libya was invaded by NATO. This invasion was not “defensive” as Libya did not threaten NATO. Micah Zenko in an essay entitled, “The Big Lie About the Libyan War,” (Foreign Policy, March 22, 2016) explains that the Obama Administration sought “regime change” and was not primarily motivated by protecting civilians. In addition, Alan Kuperman in International Security (Summer 2013) showed that “the intervention extended the war’s duration about sixfold; increased its death toll approximately seven to ten times; and exacerbated human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors.” Kuperman’s research represent “inconvenient truths.” They are therefore ignored by most “security experts” who specialize in Russia. Yet, NATO is about more than just Russia even if many politicians, journalists, and security experts think otherwise.
Using the 1950s Era to Benchmark Russian Intentions
According to Kragh, “the timing” of the Russian announcement was not a “coincidence” because “we have heard this type of play time and time again.” He says that “Moscow has had a similar attitude to Sweden and Finland since the 1950s” that “this is the kind of power language Russia uses to make the world more benevolent to the Russian line.” Kragh’s analysis raises many questions. The first question is whether Russia in the 1950s is the same Russia as today. The second question is whether we can go back in time and benchmark what Russia said previously (even in the Soviet era) and use that to describe the present. Using either formula I will now pick out something from the 1950s era and then use that to benchmark Russia’s intentions today. Let’s try to do that in a way that Kragh does not.
I will now selectively quote something from Russia’s past, i.e. the late 1950s and early 1960s. I will use these selective quotes to make Russia look benign. I will use these quotes to suggest that Russia tries to get the West not to promote military build ups, but rather the opposite. I take two quotes from Matthew Evangelista’s book, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War, Cornell University Press, 2002.
Evangelista, Quote 1, page 90:
“Following the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union undertook initiatives seemingly intended to reduce international tensions and improve the prospects for arms control. Perhaps the most significant was the reduction in Soviet conventional forces by nearly half from 1953 to 1961.”
Evangelista, Quote 2, page 121:
“In his last year in office, Khrushchev revealed ever more clearly his intentions vis-à-vis the Soviet military, and he seized every opportunity to promote his program of military reform. The signing of the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, for example, gave Khrushchev a chance to press for further reductions of armed forces and military spending, in the wake of what he consistently sought to portray as a major improvement in the international atmosphere. By the time the Kennedy administration began to take the prospect of cooperation with Khrushchev seriously, it was too late.”
These quotes show at the very least how Khrushchev made non-aggressive moves, moves consistent with arms control and possibly disarmament, and moves reducing the conventional threat to Sweden. I am allowed to pick such selective facts from the past using the formula which Kragh himself deployed, i.e. say that Russia is such and such because of some benchmarking from about seventy or so years ago. We also learn nothing from Kragh about the McCloy-Zorin agreements about general and complete disarmament which came later, during the Kennedy Administration.
The Kaliningrad Missiles
Russia’s Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned “Sweden and Finland that NATO membership could result in increased Russian military defense in the Baltic Sea region and the Baltics” and argued that this “kind of action has not been necessary until now.” In contrast, Kragh suggests that “using implicit military threats is also nothing new” and that “Russia has militarized Kaliningrad with advanced cruise missiles that can carry nuclear weapons, so what Medvedev says is not true.” We get a different perspective from an article entitled, “Putin promises countermeasures in response to NATO expansion,” published in DW, November 21, 2016, where we learn the following: “Russian President Vladimir Putin…said Russia [would] ‘take countermeasures’ in response to NATO expansion,” starting with “deployment of the S-400 air missile defense system and ballistic Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad.” Kragh claims that Russia already militarized Kaliningrad with cruise missiles that could carry nuclear weapons, so Russia saying that they will increase military defense even more is irrelevant. Yet, Putin explained that a very advanced missile system was deployed in response to NATO expansion. Putin’s earlier linkage of the Kaliningrad missiles to NATO expansion is another inconvenient truth.
Kragh implies that the earlier militarization is just something Putin or Russia does because they are dangerous. There is no consideration of the security dilemma or how Putin may react to Western military expansionism. So we can take “the nothing new” remark in a different way than Kragh intended, i.e. Russia again reacts to NATO expansion. Yet, that’s not what Kragh clearly means because what he means is that Russia is always militaristic and dangerous but for (apparently) endogenous, internal or innate reasons. In contrast, the Khruschev discussion clearly show that the “always” does not work, even using the time frame Kragh selects, i.e. around the 1950s. Of course, I can acknowledge Russian aggression against Baku under Lenin, the Soviet occupation of Iran, Soviet attacks on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and post-Soviet attacks on Georgia, Syria, and Chechnya, etc. These are obvious and examples of horrible Russian actions. Yet, there is a much longer list of horrible US military attacks and interventions and NATO involves an alliance with the US, the leading interventionary state in the world. Through the magical babbling of “whataboutism” we can make US actions invisible and thus win any argument–assuming one caves into this anti-Enlightenment trick of turning off one’s brain to please someone who resists facts and inconvenient truths.
Russian Militarization No Matter What, i.e. The USA Does Not Exist as a Global Military Power
Kragh says that “regardless of what Sweden and Finland do on the issue of NATO, Russia will continue to militarize” and they have done that “for 20 years, even when the debate about NATO [in Sweden and Finland] has been non-existent.” Kragh appears to be arguing that if Russia increases its military budgets or militarism then that has nothing to do with what Sweden and Finland do. Yet, he offers no convincing evidence for such a claim. What’s the problem? The US military budget has long dwarfed the Russian military budget. Elliot Negin, writing in Scientific American, (September 14, 2020) explains that “by the Department of Defense’s own accounting, taxpayers spent $13.34 trillion on the U.S. military from 2000 through fiscal year 2019 in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars,” if you add “another $3.18 trillion for the Veterans Administration…the yearly average comes to a whopping $826 billion.” Please consider the comparative spending of the US and Russia (and China) in the recent past (see Figure 1). One sees as Kragh says that the Russian military budget has gone up, but it’s hardly a large fraction of the US military budget (which includes power projection into Europe and has been associated with NATO expansion).
Figure 1: A Comparison of US, Russian and Chinese Military Budgets
The other issue here is that Russia could do worse despite increasing its military budget. Let us think carefully about the implications of what Kragh appears to suggest. What he appears to suggest, and I could be wrong, is that it is no big deal that Russia threatens to do worse to Sweden and Finland because the Russians have already increased their military budget. In contrast, Finnish and Swedish leaders insist that something “new” has happened and that is precisely why Finland and Sweden will join NATO. Which is it? Kragh says nothing new, nothing worse, in part of his arguments. Hence, he appears to argue against the main reason for joining NATO. In some ways, nothing new is happening because a threat against Ukraine is not a threat against Sweden or should not trigger Sweden’s joining NATO. Why do I think that? I think that because not too long ago the Swedish prime minister said that Sweden joining NATO would be destabilizing, i.e. nothing new enough has occurred to change things.
Is Russia the Sole Evil in the Calculations?
Kragh accuses Russia of using “power language…to make the world more benevolent to the Russian line.” Yet, when Sweden and Finland threaten to join NATO, which historically has engaged in military interventions in Libya (and elsewhere), can’t we say that these two countries are playing “power games”? Is “power language” worse than a “power game” where the game involves joining a military alliance which is largely dedicated now to projecting military power against Russia?
The debate in Sweden centers on the idea that Russia aggressively and without justification attacked Ukraine. That much is true. Yet, this debate also extends to other notions which are untrue. What are these notions? First, Sweden is not itself an aggressive power, even though it supported illegal interventions in Libya and Iraq. Second, an attack on Ukraine is a threat to Finland and Sweden, although there is no evidence of that. In contrast, while Russia has not joined a military alliance aimed at potentially attacking Finland and Sweden, these two nations have openly discussed joining a military alliance aimed at Russia. Russia is an imperialist and militarist power, without a doubt. It has engaged in military exercises aimed at Sweden. Yet, Sweden is itself a militarist power and has also engaged in military exercises aimed at Russia. Russia’s slaughter in Ukraine is evil, terrible, horrific and unjustified. All that is true. Yet, this slaughter can’t be used to justify joining NATO for one simple reason. If all the nations that have suffered from Swedish militarism, including Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, were to join in a military alliance against Sweden, that would be considered inconceivable, immoral, dangerous and reckless.
In sum, Russia has long been a “dangerous” military power, but depending on where you sit in this world, Sweden itself has been a “dangerous” military power (albeit, not at Russia’s scale). Russia’s horrific bombardment of cities is nothing new. After Chechnya was being bombed back to the stone age, Swedish businesses (for good or bad reasons) continued invest heavily in Russia and import Russian oil, helping to pay for the Russian air force.
Those arguing for Swedish military budget increases, Swedish entrance into NATO, and arms transfers to Ukraine argue in two opposing directions: (a) Russia has always been very dangerous or (b) Russia is now very dangerous, but was less so before. Position (a) is needed to deflect the value of any Swedish move that could be construed as provocative of Russia because after all Russia is evil and the evilness of a state means that they can’t react to what you do to provoke them (an absolutely nutty idea that is widely held). Position (b) is needed in order to whitewash Sweden’s own dirty past in helping subsidize the Russian warfare state. I am sure some people hold both notions in their brain at the same time. One way they do that is by arguing, “we were wrong about Russia, they were always more dangerous than we thought and we were suckered into playing nice with them.” The problem with this line is that once someone admits they are wrong about one foreign policy assessment, then they might have to admit that they could be wrong about another, i.e. maybe Russia could engage in diplomacy if the U.S. were interested in that, which they clearly are not.
The overarching issue is not that Russia is not dangerous (they have been). Rather, the issue is that the US (and NATO), Russia and even Sweden have each been dangerous. The logic of mutual and comprehensive disarmament is to pair back the militarism of all states, not just your favorite choice of a dangerous state. And even if the US and Sweden were far more democratic than Russia (which they are), the US is not less militaristic than Russia (which they are not). This being so, these states should be able to see the benefit of leveraging their democracy or security investments to pair back militarism, but that can’t occur when some selectively demonize Russia, neglect NATO’s expansionism, and pretend that Sweden is simply an innocent victim to aggression.
